MiniSpy - CodeProject

Sample Image - MiniSpy.jpg

Introduction

(Rev 2.0)

I often use Spy++ to track window messages but have rarely used it to look at the attributes of a window.

When i have used it, I've found using the finder tool to be a really awkward device because it presents a static interface to what i find to be a much more dynamic activity.

I decided therefore to see if I could devise an alternative interface which would allow me to look at a window's attributes with the minimum of fuss and bother.

The result is MiniSpy.

There's nothing very special about it, but it does provide the following features:

All attributes are visible in one pane
Dynamically updates as you drag it around
Displays control specific styles for all of the standard windows and common controls separately to the standard window styles.
Provides a filter drop-down so that if you have registered you own window class and it is based on a standard control class you can manually select the base window class to see the control styles
'Refresh' button for refreshing the current window's attributes
Provides tooltips to view long rows

History

New Features (2.0)

'Lock Updates' button/shortcut to prevent updating of the picked window as you move MiniSpy.
Buttons/shortcuts to navigate to parent window, first child windows, next/previous windows (note: these buttons will automatically lock updates to prevent the new window being immediately overridden).
Vertical toolbar so that all buttons are visible.
Manual implementation of RealWindowFromPoint() for win95 (see bug fixes (1.2) below).
Addition of control styles for tooltips_class32.

Bug Fixes (2.0)

Missing Menu (#32768), Desktop (#32769), Icon Title (#32772), tooltips_class32, Task Switcher (#32771) classnames added to filter combobox.

New Features (1.2)

Show the 'hittest' result returned by the window in response to a WM_NCHITTEST message

Bug Fixes (1.2)

Correctly pick windows contained by a group box. Thanks to Philippe Lhoste (PhiLho@GMX.net)
Previously, MiniSpy used the method ::WindowFromPoint() to pick the window. However, as Philippe pointed out this does not always work with controls within group boxes, specifically when the controls are behind the group box in the z-order.

To solve this I have extended the window picking to also use ::RealChildWindowFromPoint() once the initial pick is done. The documentation for this function effectively states that it ignores windows which return HTTRANSPARENT to a WM_NCHITTEST message, which group boxes do.

This solves the problem except for nested group boxes which are ignored by ::RealChildWindowFromPoint because they too return HTTRANSPARENT.

The docs also indicated that ::RealChildWindowFromPoint() is not supported on windows 95 which is why I have linked to it dynamically.

New Features (1.1)

Can use any one of its corners to pick the windows
Shows window properties (via EnumPropsEx)
Includes richedit ES_ styles
Includes richedit ENM_ styles
Includes common control CCS_ styles for toolbars and status bars
Provides a 'Restore Size' button to return to the startup size

Bug Fixes (1.11)

Crash under XP when enumerating properties using EnumPropsEx(). Thanks to limax (limax@hot.ee).

Some Comments on the Source Code

All the class, window, windowEx and control styles that are used are located in styles.h. If I've missed any, feel free to add them to your version and mail them to me for addition
I decided to make MiniSpy 'always on top' as i find it most useful in that mode, but when i turned on tooltips in the list control these appeared behind the MiniSpy Window! Since the tooltips are a very useful feature for the style rows, I came up with an interesting workaround: I handle WM_ACTIVATEAPP and make MiniSpy 'topmost' when its not the active window and 'not topmost' when it is active.
To retrieve the window caption for the window and its parent I've used WM_GETTEXT instead of GetWindowText. This is simply because, for one reason or another, GetWindowText did not seem to work for some windows in this situation.

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here

About the Author

.dan.g.

Software Developer
Maptek

Australia

Member

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.dan.g. is a former chartered structural engineer from the uk. He's been programming since university and has been developing commercial windows software in Australia since 1998.

For all his latest freeware visit AbstractSpoon.
Follow him on Facebook, or on Twitter.

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Comments and Discussions

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Another suggestion

Djohan Kho

23:03 2 Jun '08

Can you also add the tooltips text in the property window? Thanks.
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ASP.NET

patiech

22:33 12 Mar '06

Hi there, I am looking for a tool that can handle the problem of events getting lost during compile time . Please help....
Sign In·View Thread·Permalink	1.00/5 (1 vote)

More complex spy here

Anonymous

17:06 26 Aug '05

Has anyone seen this? That spy gets more info. Does anyone know how to get source to it?
Sign In·View Thread·Permalink	1.60/5 (4 votes)

Good article

^^o000o^^

6:24 22 Nov '04

I have coded a small class probe. It may be diffrent at: http://codeproject.com/threads/ClassProbeArticle.asp[^] Cheers
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Great app

korsuas

4:00 8 Apr '04

Hey, great application.

Listen, I've been searching arround codeproject to see how one can hook iexplorer.
I have his pesky li'l proggie that hooks IE somehow and maybe, maybe randomly redirects me to http://www.smart-finder.biz/
Now, this is NOT the default search engine.
It happend to me before, on another windowsXP but with www.lender... smtg.

I HATE it when I search google, and at least 5 links per page are totaly #@$%.

BTW, when I hover over the link, it doesnt say it's going to redirect me. It shows the me the correct link.

Anyhow, if you have any idea what to search for, or a link, I would really apreciate it.

Thank you,
Adrian Korsuas

Re: Great app

.dan.g.

21:40 9 Apr '04

what happens is that if the link fails (with a 404 error) then some servers don't return this to the user but decide to redirect to somewhere else.

i don't know who exactly is responsible for the redirecting (ie which server) but its been in the tech news recently.

sorry i can't be more precise, but if i come across anything in my travels i'll send you a link.

rgds

.dan.g.

AbstractSpoon

Am I fussy?

Mykel

12:49 16 Jan '04

When I downloaded the executable of MiniSpy 2.0 I was, in the first moment, a bit irritated. Do I really have Rev. 2.0? Because the about box shows version 1.2.

But when I right clicked on the file in explorer and checked the version tag, I relaxed and enjoyed brand-new version 2.0.

Hmmm... perhaps I'm fussy indeed. Wink | ;)

But the tool is absolutely great, better and faster than Spy++ in most cases! You got my five!

CU...

YAY!

DaFrawg

6:57 11 Jan '04

Ow man I really needed this. THANK YOU!
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Re: YAY!

.dan.g.

18:22 13 Jan '04

excellent! its one of the tools that i use all the time. rgds .dan.g. AbstractSpoon (subscribe)
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Request

Darren Schroeder

15:37 29 Jul '02

How about a flash window toolbar button?
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Re: Request

DanG

16:53 30 Jul '02

good idea. also might be useful to flash windows as they are picked.
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Child windows

Philippe Lhoste

6:06 17 Jul '02

MiniSpy only looks at the first window found under the cursor.
For example, if a control is inside a group box (a quite common case...) and this group box is first in the Windows handle list, MiniSpy shows the group box but none of the controls inside.
You can take a look at Multimedia Properties, Audio tab, Playback group box so see this.

This is annoying...
I am looking a way to dig inside, but currently I have no luck using ChildWindowFromPoint.

[Some time later]
Well, the method I found is to enumerate the sibblings of the found window until I find the one I search for. In my case, the checkbox or radiobutton which have the cursor inside its rectangle. But we can search the smallest sibbling including the cursor, for example. Except for childs and group boxes, overlapping windows are quite rare.
One case can be with long labels overlapping the associated control, though.

Philippe Lhoste (Paris -- France)
Professional programmer and amateur artist
http://jove.prohosting.com/~philho/

Re: Child windows

DanG

18:54 18 Jul '02

Previously, MiniSpy used the method ::WindowFromPoint() to pick the window. However, as you have pointed out this does not always work with controls within group boxes, _specifically_ when the controls are behind the group box in the z-order.

To solve this I have extended the window picking to also use ::RealChildWindowFromPoint() once the initial pick is done. The documentation for this function effectively states that it ignores windows which return HTTRANSPARENT to a WM_NCHITTEST message, which group boxes do.

This solves the problem except for nested group boxes which are ignored by ::RealChildWindowFromPoint() because they too return HTTRANSPARENT.

The docs also indicate that ::RealChildWindowFromPoint() is not supported on windows 95 which is why I have linked to it dynamically.

I have sent updated source/exe to chris maunder and this will appear presently.

Re: Child windows

Philippe Lhoste

2:43 22 Jul '02

Good reactivity I was/am reluctant to use the RealChildWindowFromPoint function, since it doesn't work on Win95, but at least it seems to work fine (on NT). Good work. Thank you. Philippe Lhoste (Paris -- France) Professional programmer and amateur artist http://jove.prohosting.com/~philho/
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Re: Child windows

DanG

15:34 22 Jul '02

>> it doesn't work on Win95 i suspect that it would not be too difficult to implement this method manually. 1. walk all the children in the parent of the wnd returned from WindowFromPoint(). 2. for each child, send WM_NCHITTEST and return the first child which returns something other than HTTRANSPARENT or HTNOWHERE. regards
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Re: Child windows

Philippe Lhoste

22:15 22 Jul '02

Thank you for the pointer, I will try it out. I had to refresh my memory about this WM_NCHITTEST message, it seems quite useful Philippe Lhoste (Paris -- France) Professional programmer and amateur artist http://jove.prohosting.com/~philho/
Sign In·View Thread·Permalink	2.00/5 (1 vote)

:-) Thanks

Brian Delahunty

5:57 19 Jun '02

Cool Nish on life [methinks] "It's The Soapbox; topics are optional" Shog ⁹
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Context sensitive menu

ed welch

4:06 16 Apr '02

Hi,
Excellent tool! Well done!
I wanted to use it to allow the text in read-only error messages to be copied to the clipboard. I enabled this by adding a right click menu to copy the currently selected item to the clipboard – then you can copy the Caption text.
In case anyone else finds this useful here is the code:
Add the menu resource to the RC file:

IDR_GRID_CONTEXT MENU DISCARDABLE
BEGIN
POPUP "context"
BEGIN
MENUITEM "©", ID_COPY
END
END

Add these lines to MiniSpyDlg.h

afx_msg void OnRclickAttributes(NMHDR* pNMHDR, LRESULT* pResult);
afx_msg void OnCopy();

Add these to the message map in MiniSpyDlg.cpp:

ON_NOTIFY(NM_RCLICK, IDC_ATTRIBUTES, OnRclickAttributes)
ON_COMMAND(ID_COPY, OnCopy)

Finally add these functions:

void CMiniSpyDlg::OnRclickAttributes(NMHDR*, LRESULT* pResult)
{
POINT pointScreen;
DWORD dwPos;
dwPos = GetMessagePos();
pointScreen.x = LOWORD(dwPos);
pointScreen.y = HIWORD(dwPos);
// Convert the point from screen to client coordinates,
// relative to the listview
CMenu* pMenu = m_menu.GetSubMenu(0);
pMenu->TrackPopupMenu(TPM_LEFTALIGN | TPM_RIGHTBUTTON, pointScreen.x, pointScreen.y, this);
*pResult = 0;
}

void CMiniSpyDlg::OnCopy()
{
CString str;
POSITION pos = m_lcAttributes.GetFirstSelectedItemPosition();
if (pos == NULL) return;
int nItem = m_lcAttributes.GetNextSelectedItem(pos);
str = m_lcAttributes.GetItemText(nItem, 1);
if (str.GetLength() == 0) return;
if ( OpenClipboard() )
{
EmptyClipboard();
CSharedFile sfText(GMEM_MOVEABLE|GMEM_DDESHARE|GMEM_ZEROINIT);
HGLOBAL hData = 0;
sfText.Write(str, str.GetLength());
hData = sfText.Detach();
if (hData)
{
SetClipboardData(CF_TEXT, hData);
}
CloseClipboard();
}
}

Great ! one question...

Shaun baradara

0:25 30 Mar '02

is it possible to use a toolbar in a dialog if so would you please let me know how to. thaanks in advance.
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Re: Great ! one question...

DanG

23:57 27 Jun '02

sorry for the immense delay the key is in handling the TTN_NEEDTEXT notification manually. check out the following handler: BOOL CMiniSpyDlg::OnNeedTooltip(UINT, NMHDR* pNMHDR, LRESULT* pResult)
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Very nice!

Luis Alonso Ramos

21:31 2 Feb '02

Hi, MiniSpy it's cool!! I'd suggest for 2.0 a better display of window properties, inside a combo box for example, so that you can see all without scrolling... Also how about some window navigation? (like going to parent, first child or sibling. I think someone mentioned this already) Cheers, -- LuisR -------- Luis Alonso Ramos Chihuahua, Mexico www.luisalonsoramos.com
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Running the EXE crashes under WXP

Uwe Keim

10:24 29 Jan '02

When I run the EXE directly from the download (no compiling myself), it crashes before doing/showing anything at all. I'm using WXP Professional, German version, latest ServicePack and Hotfix stuff. -- See me: www.magerquark.de
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Re: Running the EXE crashes under WXP

DanG

12:13 29 Jan '02

i have posted a fix for this (see the mail thread regarding PropEnumProcEx) but i guess it has not yet been updated.
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Bug in PropEnumProcEx

limax

1:32 23 Jan '02

MiniSpy may crash at any moment. OS: WindowsXP.
After debugging I realized that some calls to CMiniSpyDlg::PropEnumProcEx in file MiniSpyDlg.cpp have strange LPTSTR lpszString parameter value. For example 0x0000a918, and of course it is wrong pointer value. This value is set by SetProp() function and here is it's description:

lpString 

Pointer to a null-terminated string or contains an atom that identifies a string. If this parameter is an atom, it must be a global atom created by a previous call to theGlobalAddAtom function. The atom, a 16-bit value, must be placed in the low-order word of lpString; the high-order word must be zero.

So you should check if it is string or atom.
Here is code to do that:

BOOL CALLBACK CMiniSpyDlg::PropEnumProcEx(HWND /*hwnd*/, LPTSTR lpszString, HANDLE hData, DWORD dwData)
{
    TCHAR szAtomName[6+256]=_T("Atom: ");
    if (lpszString == (LPTSTR)(ATOM)lpszString)
    {
        GlobalGetAtomName((ATOM)lpszString,&szAtomName[6],256);
        lpszString = szAtomName;
    }
// ... the rest of the function
}

Re: Bug in PropEnumProcEx

DanG

11:49 23 Jan '02

thanks very much for this. i have changed the code, verified it under XP and submitted an update package. i guess it will take a couple of days to appear here.
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